Page 195 of Magical Moonbeam
And pain.
He wasn’t trying to push it away.
He wasenduringit and trying tounderstandit.
“Where does it hurt precisely?” I asked again, this time more softly.
He tapped his side gently. “Here. It started as a sharp ache. But now… it’s like a root. A single thread, winding in.”
I nodded and removed the card from my pocket.
Nova took a slow step closer, her fingers skimming the air near Keegan’s ribs, careful not to touch. The orb in her other hand pulsed again, flickering between warm gold and cold silver. A duality of magics, tugging against each other.
Her gaze fell to the Hanged Man card in my fingers, and sadness fell over her expression as I handed it back to her, trying to push the nausea away.
She nodded and turned her attention back to Keegan.
“It’s not trying to destroy you,” Nova said, more to herself than to us. “It’s studying you. Learning you.”
“That’s exactly what it feels like,” Keegan murmured. “Like it’s deciding who to be.”
I felt the world tilt just slightly under my feet.
This wasn’t the curse we knew. This wasn’t the cold rot that had buried itself in Stonewick, that had turned my father into something else, or sealed the Academy for decades.
This was thenextform.
A new shell being shaped.
Keegan was becoming the vessel.
And none of us knew what that would look like.
I stood in front of him, not reaching for him this time, but anchoring myself in his gaze. “Do you feel like yourself?”
He blinked. “Yes. But also…”
He hesitated.
“Also?”
“…more aware. I can sense the Academy more clearly. The Wards. The heartbeat of the land under the stones.”
Nova’s brows lifted. “It’s not just binding,” she said quietly. “It’sinfusing.”
Ardetia stepped forward. “We will get through this. We won’t let it bury you.”
“Or destroy you,” Nova added.
“No,” Keegan said. “I’m awake inside it. Iknowit’s there.”
The implications clicked into place.
He wasn’t being buried.
He was beingrewritten.
“Is it… Changing your magic?” I asked.
